I'm puzzled by the nntp server that I use as a Sonic customer. Myunderstanding, after I looked at the Sonic blogs and user forums, is thatthe company no longer supports newsgroups but that they have kept a newsserver available. I'm not clear about what this means. And further searchingon Sonic's own website has not given me any better understanding. Sonic nolonger hosts its own support newsgroups.

If you're reading this message, Sonic's news server allows postings. I canread what others have posted at least on some of the newsgroups, like"ba.internet."

However another group I read and occasionally add to, "ba <dot> food"appears to get purged regularly so that past posting disappear. Ba.internetdoes not get purged at the same time. Somebody must be babysitting the newsserver. I'm wondering if this purging is automatic, manual, or technicalfailure. The purging of the "food" group appears to coincide with the groupbeing flooded by some folks who appear to have some weird conflicts to workout, unrelated to discussions about local food. I suspect that the purgingof postings might be triggered manually by some disgusted person.

Tak Nakamoto <***@sonic.net> wrote:+---------------| I'm puzzled by the nntp server that I use as a Sonic customer....| I can read what others have posted at least on some of the| newsgroups, like "ba.internet."|| However another group I read and occasionally add to,| "ba <dot> food" appears to get purged regularly so that| past posting disappear. Ba.internet does not get purged| at the same time. Somebody must be babysitting the news| server. I'm wondering if this purging is automatic, manual,| or technical failure. The purging of the "food" group| appears to coincide with the group being flooded by some| folks who appear to have some weird conflicts to work out,| unrelated to discussions about local food. I suspect that| the purging of postings might be triggered manually by| some disgusted person.|| Can someone more familiar with Sonic explain what's going on?+---------------

I'm not familiar with Sonic's internal procedures w.r.t. netnews,but in general it's quite common for news servers to be set upto automatically expire [what you're calling "purge"] articleson a per newsgroup basis, based on various criteria such as age,total number of unexpired articles in the newsgroup, and/ortotal size [bytes] of unexpired articles in the group. Differentnewsgroups may have the criteria set to different values.

The Wikipedia article on Usenet notes:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Usenet#Binary_retention_time...Binary retention timeEach newsgroup is generally allocated a certain amount ofstorage space for post content. When this storage has beenfilled, each time a new post arrives, old posts are deletedto make room for the new content. If the network bandwidthavailable to a server is high but the storage allocation issmall, it is possible for a huge flood of incoming contentto overflow the allocation and push out everything that wasin the group before it. If the flood is large enough, thebeginning of the flood will begin to be deleted even beforethe last part of the flood has been posted.

Even though the above was written about binary groups, it alsoapplies to other groups with large traffic surges, which mightexplain what you're seeing.

Post by Rob WarnockEven though the above was written about binary groups, it alsoapplies to other groups with large traffic surges, which mightexplain what you're seeing.Again, what you're seeing is probably all automatic, *not* manual...----------Thanks. This is consistent with all the facts. While it doesn't rule outmanual intervention, this explanation seems to be the most likely.Tak

From what I understand, news.sonic.net has a much shorter retention forarticles than their other newsserver, supernews.sonic.net. However, thedownload speed of news.sonic is considerably faster thansupernews.sonic, which seems to be limited to around 60kbps butsupernews has a much longer retention time for articles.

From what I understand, news.sonic.net has a much shorter retention forarticles than their other newsserver, supernews.sonic.net. However, thedownload speed of news.sonic is considerably faster thansupernews.sonic, which seems to be limited to around 60kbps butsupernews has a much longer retention time for articles.

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I didn't even know about "supernews.sonic." I didn't find a mention of itwhen I searched the Sonic website. I'll have to look again.

Post by Tak NakamotoI'm puzzled by the nntp server that I use as a Sonic customer. Myunderstanding, after I looked at the Sonic blogs and user forums, is thatthe company no longer supports newsgroups but that they have kept a newsserver available. I'm not clear about what this means. And further searchingon Sonic's own website has not given me any better understanding. Sonic nolonger hosts its own support newsgroups.If you're reading this message, Sonic's news server allows postings. I canread what others have posted at least on some of the newsgroups, like"ba.internet."However another group I read and occasionally add to, "ba <dot> food"appears to get purged regularly so that past posting disappear. Ba.internetdoes not get purged at the same time. Somebody must be babysitting the newsserver. I'm wondering if this purging is automatic, manual, or technicalfailure. The purging of the "food" group appears to coincide with the groupbeing flooded by some folks who appear to have some weird conflicts to workout, unrelated to discussions about local food. I suspect that the purgingof postings might be triggered manually by some disgusted person.Can someone more familiar with Sonic explain what's going on?Tak Nakamoto

news.sonic.net seems to be out of service now. The indexes are severelycorrupted.

--I will not see posts from astraweb, theremailer, dizum, or googlebecause they host Usenet flooders.

Sonic's news server is still out of service. Also I tried to use supernews.sonic and could not log in. But this might be for the same reason that news.sonic is unusable.Sigh, I'm stuck with google for now.

You are never stuck with google for news. Several of us from sonichave switched to eternal september. (www.eternal-september.org)

Post by Paul E CoadYou are never stuck with google for news. Several of us from sonichave switched to eternal september. (www.eternal-september.org)--paul

That's what I use, too. I don't know the guy who runs it but I think it'sin Germany or somewhere, and he had a lot of dedication to keeping his newsserver up and running 24/7. I don't know a thing about news server softwareexcept that most people who have run them complain about what a hassle theyare to run.

And there are others like Giganews that provide news feeds (except binaries)for a monthly fee.

---This email has been checked for viruses by Avast antivirus software.https://www.avast.com/antivirus

Post by Paul E CoadYou are never stuck with google for news. Several of us from sonichave switched to eternal september. (www.eternal-september.org)--paul

That's what I use, too. I don't know the guy who runs it but I think it'sin Germany or somewhere, and he had a lot of dedication to keeping his newsserver up and running 24/7. I don't know a thing about news server softwareexcept that most people who have run them complain about what a hassle theyare to run.And there are others like Giganews that provide news feeds (except binaries)for a monthly fee.

These days a number of USENET providers sell blocks ofdata. You could get a 25GB block for $5. For a purely text userthat would last a very long time.

Post by t***@gmail.comSonic's news server is still out of service. Also I tried touse supernews.sonic and could not log in. But this might be forthe same reason that news.sonic is unusable.Sigh, I'm stuck with google for now.

No you are not. When I was a sonic punter I ysed eternalseptember:

http://www.eternal-september.org/

--"When I was little, I didn't know I was going to grow up in the SovietUnion. But here we are." April Daniels, April 2015